git-log(1) Manual Page

NAME

git-log - Show commit logs

SYNOPSIS

git log [<options>] [<since>..<until>] [[--] <path>...]

DESCRIPTION

Shows the commit logs.

The command takes options applicable to the git rev-list
command to control what is shown and how, and options applicable to
the git diff-* commands to control how the changes
each commit introduces are shown.

OPTIONS

<since>..<until>

Show only commits between the named two commits. When
either <since> or <until> is omitted, it defaults to
HEAD, i.e. the tip of the current branch.
For a more complete list of ways to spell <since>
and <until>, see gitrevisions(7).

--follow

Continue listing the history of a file beyond renames
(works only for a single file).

--no-decorate

--decorate[=short|full|no]

Print out the ref names of any commits that are shown. If short is
specified, the ref name prefixes refs/heads/, refs/tags/ and
refs/remotes/ will not be printed. If full is specified, the
full ref name (including prefix) will be printed. The default option
is short.

--source

Print out the ref name given on the command line by which each
commit was reached.

--full-diff

Without this flag, "git log -p <path>..." shows commits that
touch the specified paths, and diffs about the same specified
paths. With this, the full diff is shown for commits that touch
the specified paths; this means that "<path>..." limits only
commits, and doesn't limit diff for those commits.

Note that this affects all diff-based output types, e.g. those
produced by --stat etc.

--log-size

Before the log message print out its size in bytes. Intended
mainly for porcelain tools consumption. If git is unable to
produce a valid value size is set to zero.
Note that only message is considered, if also a diff is shown
its size is not included.

[--] <path>...

Show only commits that are enough to explain how the files
that match the specified paths came to be. See "History
Simplification" below for details and other simplification
modes.

To prevent confusion with options and branch names, paths may need to
be prefixed with "-- " to separate them from options or refnames.

Commit Limiting

Besides specifying a range of commits that should be listed using the
special notations explained in the description, additional commit
limiting may be applied.

Using more options generally further limits the output (e.g.
--since=<date1> limits to commits newer than <date1>, and using it
with --grep=<pattern> further limits to commits whose log message
has a line that matches <pattern>), unless otherwise noted.

Note that these are applied before commit
ordering and formatting options, such as --reverse.

-<number>

-n <number>

--max-count=<number>

Limit the number of commits to output.

--skip=<number>

Skip number commits before starting to show the commit output.

--since=<date>

--after=<date>

Show commits more recent than a specific date.

--until=<date>

--before=<date>

Show commits older than a specific date.

--author=<pattern>

--committer=<pattern>

Limit the commits output to ones with author/committer
header lines that match the specified pattern (regular
expression). With more than one --author=<pattern>,
commits whose author matches any of the given patterns are
chosen (similarly for multiple --committer=<pattern>).

--grep-reflog=<pattern>

Limit the commits output to ones with reflog entries that
match the specified pattern (regular expression). With
more than one --grep-reflog, commits whose reflog message
matches any of the given patterns are chosen. It is an
error to use this option unless --walk-reflogs is in use.

--grep=<pattern>

Limit the commits output to ones with log message that
matches the specified pattern (regular expression). With
more than one --grep=<pattern>, commits whose message
matches any of the given patterns are chosen (but see
--all-match).

When --show-notes is in effect, the message from the notes as
if it is part of the log message.

--all-match

Limit the commits output to ones that match all given --grep,
instead of ones that match at least one.

-i

--regexp-ignore-case

Match the regexp limiting patterns without regard to letters case.

-E

--extended-regexp

Consider the limiting patterns to be extended regular expressions
instead of the default basic regular expressions.

-F

--fixed-strings

Consider the limiting patterns to be fixed strings (don't interpret
pattern as a regular expression).

--remove-empty

Stop when a given path disappears from the tree.

--merges

Print only merge commits. This is exactly the same as --min-parents=2.

--no-merges

Do not print commits with more than one parent. This is
exactly the same as --max-parents=1.

--min-parents=<number>

--max-parents=<number>

--no-min-parents

--no-max-parents

Show only commits which have at least (or at most) that many
commits. In particular, --max-parents=1 is the same as --no-merges,
--min-parents=2 is the same as --merges. --max-parents=0
gives all root commits and --min-parents=3 all octopus merges.

--no-min-parents and --no-max-parents reset these limits (to no limit)
again. Equivalent forms are --min-parents=0 (any commit has 0 or more
parents) and --max-parents=-1 (negative numbers denote no upper limit).

--first-parent

Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge
commit. This option can give a better overview when
viewing the evolution of a particular topic branch,
because merges into a topic branch tend to be only about
adjusting to updated upstream from time to time, and
this option allows you to ignore the individual commits
brought in to your history by such a merge.

--not

Reverses the meaning of the ^ prefix (or lack thereof)
for all following revision specifiers, up to the next --not.

--all

Pretend as if all the refs in refs/ are listed on the
command line as <commit>.

--branches[=<pattern>]

Pretend as if all the refs in refs/heads are listed
on the command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit
branches to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?,
*, or [, /* at the end is implied.

--tags[=<pattern>]

Pretend as if all the refs in refs/tags are listed
on the command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit
tags to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *,
or [, /* at the end is implied.

--remotes[=<pattern>]

Pretend as if all the refs in refs/remotes are listed
on the command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit
remote-tracking branches to ones matching given shell glob.
If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.

--glob=<glob-pattern>

Pretend as if all the refs matching shell glob <glob-pattern>
are listed on the command line as <commit>. Leading refs/,
is automatically prepended if missing. If pattern lacks ?, *,
or [, /* at the end is implied.

--ignore-missing

Upon seeing an invalid object name in the input, pretend as if
the bad input was not given.

--bisect

Pretend as if the bad bisection ref refs/bisect/bad
was listed and as if it was followed by --not and the good
bisection refs refs/bisect/good-* on the command
line.

--stdin

In addition to the <commit> listed on the command
line, read them from the standard input. If a -- separator is
seen, stop reading commits and start reading paths to limit the
result.

--cherry-mark

Like --cherry-pick (see below) but mark equivalent commits
with = rather than omitting them, and inequivalent ones with +.

--cherry-pick

Omit any commit that introduces the same change as
another commit on the "other side" when the set of
commits are limited with symmetric difference.

For example, if you have two branches, A and B, a usual way
to list all commits on only one side of them is with
--left-right (see the example below in the description of
the --left-right option). It however shows the commits that were cherry-picked
from the other branch (for example, "3rd on b" may be cherry-picked
from branch A). With this option, such pairs of commits are
excluded from the output.

--left-only

--right-only

List only commits on the respective side of a symmetric range,
i.e. only those which would be marked < resp. > by
--left-right.

For example, --cherry-pick --right-only A...B omits those
commits from B which are in A or are patch-equivalent to a commit in
A. In other words, this lists the + commits from git cherry A B.
More precisely, --cherry-pick --right-only --no-merges gives the exact
list.

--cherry

A synonym for --right-only --cherry-mark --no-merges; useful to
limit the output to the commits on our side and mark those that
have been applied to the other side of a forked history with
git log --cherry upstream...mybranch, similar to
git cherry upstream mybranch.

-g

--walk-reflogs

Instead of walking the commit ancestry chain, walk
reflog entries from the most recent one to older ones.
When this option is used you cannot specify commits to
exclude (that is, ^commit, commit1..commit2,
nor commit1\...commit2 notations cannot be used).

With --pretty format other than oneline (for obvious reasons),
this causes the output to have two extra lines of information
taken from the reflog. By default, commit@{Nth} notation is
used in the output. When the starting commit is specified as
commit@{now}, output also uses commit@{timestamp} notation
instead. Under --pretty=oneline, the commit message is
prefixed with this information on the same line.
This option cannot be combined with --reverse.
See also git-reflog(1).

--merge

After a failed merge, show refs that touch files having a
conflict and don't exist on all heads to merge.

--boundary

Output uninteresting commits at the boundary, which are usually
not shown.

History Simplification

Sometimes you are only interested in parts of the history, for example the
commits modifying a particular <path>. But there are two parts of
History Simplification, one part is selecting the commits and the other
is how to do it, as there are various strategies to simplify the history.

The following options select the commits to be shown:

<paths>

Commits modifying the given <paths> are selected.

--simplify-by-decoration

Commits that are referred by some branch or tag are selected.

Note that extra commits can be shown to give a meaningful history.

The following options affect the way the simplification is performed:

Default mode

Simplifies the history to the simplest history explaining the
final state of the tree. Simplest because it prunes some side
branches if the end result is the same (i.e. merging branches
with the same content)

--full-history

Same as the default mode, but does not prune some history.

--dense

Only the selected commits are shown, plus some to have a
meaningful history.

--sparse

All commits in the simplified history are shown.

--simplify-merges

Additional option to --full-history to remove some needless
merges from the resulting history, as there are no selected
commits contributing to this merge.

--ancestry-path

When given a range of commits to display (e.g. commit1..commit2
or commit2 ^commit1), only display commits that exist
directly on the ancestry chain between the commit1 and
commit2, i.e. commits that are both descendants of commit1,
and ancestors of commit2.

A more detailed explanation follows.

Suppose you specified foo as the <paths>. We shall call commits
that modify foo !TREESAME, and the rest TREESAME. (In a diff
filtered for foo, they look different and equal, respectively.)

In the following, we will always refer to the same example history to
illustrate the differences between simplification settings. We assume

that you are filtering for a file foo in this commit graph:

.-A---M---N---O---P
/ / / / /
I B C D E
\ / / / /
`-------------'

The horizontal line of history A---P is taken to be the first parent of
each merge. The commits are:
* `I` is the initial commit, in which `foo` exists with contents
"asdf", and a file `quux` exists with contents "quux". Initial
commits are compared to an empty tree, so `I` is !TREESAME.
* In `A`, `foo` contains just "foo".
* `B` contains the same change as `A`. Its merge `M` is trivial and
hence TREESAME to all parents.
* `C` does not change `foo`, but its merge `N` changes it to "foobar",
so it is not TREESAME to any parent.
* `D` sets `foo` to "baz". Its merge `O` combines the strings from
`N` and `D` to "foobarbaz"; i.e., it is not TREESAME to any parent.
* `E` changes `quux` to "xyzzy", and its merge `P` combines the
strings to "quux xyzzy". Despite appearing interesting, `P` is
TREESAME to all parents.
'rev-list' walks backwards through history, including or excluding
commits based on whether '\--full-history' and/or parent rewriting
(via '\--parents' or '\--children') are used. The following settings
are available.
Default mode::
Commits are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent
(though this can be changed, see '\--sparse' below). If the
commit was a merge, and it was TREESAME to one parent, follow
only that parent. (Even if there are several TREESAME
parents, follow only one of them.) Otherwise, follow all
parents.
+
This results in:
+

.-A---N---O
/ / /
I---------D

+
Note how the rule to only follow the TREESAME parent, if one is
available, removed `B` from consideration entirely. `C` was
considered via `N`, but is TREESAME. Root commits are compared to an
empty tree, so `I` is !TREESAME.
+
Parent/child relations are only visible with --parents, but that does
not affect the commits selected in default mode, so we have shown the
parent lines.
--full-history without parent rewriting::
This mode differs from the default in one point: always follow
all parents of a merge, even if it is TREESAME to one of them.
Even if more than one side of the merge has commits that are
included, this does not imply that the merge itself is! In
the example, we get
+

I A B N D O

+
`P` and `M` were excluded because they are TREESAME to a parent. `E`,
`C` and `B` were all walked, but only `B` was !TREESAME, so the others
do not appear.
+
Note that without parent rewriting, it is not really possible to talk
about the parent/child relationships between the commits, so we show
them disconnected.
--full-history with parent rewriting::
Ordinary commits are only included if they are !TREESAME
(though this can be changed, see '\--sparse' below).
+
Merges are always included. However, their parent list is rewritten:
Along each parent, prune away commits that are not included
themselves. This results in
+

.-A---M---N---O---P
/ / / / /
I B / D /
\ / / / /
`-------------'

+
Compare to '\--full-history' without rewriting above. Note that `E`
was pruned away because it is TREESAME, but the parent list of P was
rewritten to contain `E`'s parent `I`. The same happened for `C` and
`N`. Note also that `P` was included despite being TREESAME.
In addition to the above settings, you can change whether TREESAME
affects inclusion:
--dense::
Commits that are walked are included if they are not TREESAME
to any parent.
--sparse::
All commits that are walked are included.
+
Note that without '\--full-history', this still simplifies merges: if
one of the parents is TREESAME, we follow only that one, so the other
sides of the merge are never walked.
--simplify-merges::
First, build a history graph in the same way that
'\--full-history' with parent rewriting does (see above).
+
Then simplify each commit `C` to its replacement `C'` in the final
history according to the following rules:
+
--
* Set `C'` to `C`.
+
* Replace each parent `P` of `C'` with its simplification `P'`. In
the process, drop parents that are ancestors of other parents, and
remove duplicates.
+
* If after this parent rewriting, `C'` is a root or merge commit (has
zero or >1 parents), a boundary commit, or !TREESAME, it remains.
Otherwise, it is replaced with its only parent.
--
+
The effect of this is best shown by way of comparing to
'\--full-history' with parent rewriting. The example turns into:
+

.-A---M---N---O
/ / /
I B D
\ / /
`---------'

+
Note the major differences in `N` and `P` over '--full-history':
+
--
* `N`'s parent list had `I` removed, because it is an ancestor of the
other parent `M`. Still, `N` remained because it is !TREESAME.
+
* `P`'s parent list similarly had `I` removed. `P` was then
removed completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME.
--
Finally, there is a fifth simplification mode available:
--ancestry-path::
Limit the displayed commits to those directly on the ancestry
chain between the "from" and "to" commits in the given commit
range. I.e. only display commits that are ancestor of the "to"
commit, and descendants of the "from" commit.
+
As an example use case, consider the following commit history:
+

+
A regular 'D..M' computes the set of commits that are ancestors of `M`,
but excludes the ones that are ancestors of `D`. This is useful to see
what happened to the history leading to `M` since `D`, in the sense
that "what does `M` have that did not exist in `D`". The result in this
example would be all the commits, except `A` and `B` (and `D` itself,
of course).
+
When we want to find out what commits in `M` are contaminated with the
bug introduced by `D` and need fixing, however, we might want to view
only the subset of 'D..M' that are actually descendants of `D`, i.e.
excluding `C` and `K`. This is exactly what the '--ancestry-path'
option does. Applied to the 'D..M' range, it results in:
+

E-------F
\ \
G---H---I---J
\
L--M

The '\--simplify-by-decoration' option allows you to view only the
big picture of the topology of the history, by omitting commits
that are not referenced by tags. Commits are marked as !TREESAME
(in other words, kept after history simplification rules described
above) if (1) they are referenced by tags, or (2) they change the
contents of the paths given on the command line. All other
commits are marked as TREESAME (subject to be simplified away).
Commit Ordering
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By default, the commits are shown in reverse chronological order.
--date-order::
Show no parents before all of its children are shown, but
otherwise show commits in the commit timestamp order.
--topo-order::
Show no parents before all of its children are shown, and
avoid showing commits on multiple lines of history
intermixed.
+
For example, in a commit history like this:
+

---1----2----4----7
\ \
3----5----6----8---

+
where the numbers denote the order of commit timestamps, `git
rev-list` and friends with `--date-order` show the commits in the
timestamp order: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1.
+
With `--topo-order`, they would show 8 6 5 3 7 4 2 1 (or 8 7 4 2 6 5
3 1); some older commits are shown before newer ones in order to
avoid showing the commits from two parallel development track mixed
together.
--reverse::
Output the commits in reverse order.
Cannot be combined with '\--walk-reflogs'.
Object Traversal
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These options are mostly targeted for packing of git repositories.
--objects::
Print the object IDs of any object referenced by the listed
commits. '--objects foo ^bar' thus means "send me
all object IDs which I need to download if I have the commit
object 'bar', but not 'foo'".
--objects-edge::
Similar to '--objects', but also print the IDs of excluded
commits prefixed with a "-" character. This is used by
linkgit:git-pack-objects[1] to build "thin" pack, which records
objects in deltified form based on objects contained in these
excluded commits to reduce network traffic.
--unpacked::
Only useful with '--objects'; print the object IDs that are not
in packs.
--no-walk[=(sorted|unsorted)]::
Only show the given commits, but do not traverse their ancestors.
This has no effect if a range is specified. If the argument
"unsorted" is given, the commits are show in the order they were
given on the command line. Otherwise (if "sorted" or no argument
was given), the commits are show in reverse chronological order
by commit time.
--do-walk::
Overrides a previous --no-walk.
Commit Formatting
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--pretty[=<format>]::
--format=<format>::
Pretty-print the contents of the commit logs in a given format,
where '<format>' can be one of 'oneline', 'short', 'medium',
'full', 'fuller', 'email', 'raw' and 'format:<string>'. See
the "PRETTY FORMATS" section for some additional details for each
format. When omitted, the format defaults to 'medium'.
+
Note: you can specify the default pretty format in the repository
configuration (see linkgit:git-config[1]).
--abbrev-commit::
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object
name, show only a partial prefix. Non default number of
digits can be specified with "--abbrev=<n>" (which also modifies
diff output, if it is displayed).
+
This should make "--pretty=oneline" a whole lot more readable for
people using 80-column terminals.
--no-abbrev-commit::
Show the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name. This negates
`--abbrev-commit` and those options which imply it such as
"--oneline". It also overrides the 'log.abbrevCommit' variable.
--oneline::
This is a shorthand for "--pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit"
used together.
--encoding[=<encoding>]::
The commit objects record the encoding used for the log message
in their encoding header; this option can be used to tell the
command to re-code the commit log message in the encoding
preferred by the user. For non plumbing commands this
defaults to UTF-8.
--notes[=<ref>]::
Show the notes (see linkgit:git-notes[1]) that annotate the
commit, when showing the commit log message. This is the default
for `git log`, `git show` and `git whatchanged` commands when
there is no `--pretty`, `--format` nor `--oneline` option given
on the command line.
+
By default, the notes shown are from the notes refs listed in the
'core.notesRef' and 'notes.displayRef' variables (or corresponding
environment overrides). See linkgit:git-config[1] for more details.
+
With an optional '<ref>' argument, show this notes ref instead of the
default notes ref(s). The ref is taken to be in `refs/notes/` if it
is not qualified.
+
Multiple --notes options can be combined to control which notes are
being displayed. Examples: "--notes=foo" will show only notes from
"refs/notes/foo"; "--notes=foo --notes" will show both notes from
"refs/notes/foo" and from the default notes ref(s).
--no-notes::
Do not show notes. This negates the above `--notes` option, by
resetting the list of notes refs from which notes are shown.
Options are parsed in the order given on the command line, so e.g.
"--notes --notes=foo --no-notes --notes=bar" will only show notes
from "refs/notes/bar".
--show-notes[=<ref>]::
--[no-]standard-notes::
These options are deprecated. Use the above --notes/--no-notes
options instead.
--show-signature::
Check the validity of a signed commit object by passing the signature
to `gpg --verify` and show the output.
--relative-date::
Synonym for `--date=relative`.
--date=(relative|local|default|iso|rfc|short|raw)::
Only takes effect for dates shown in human-readable format, such
as when using "--pretty". `log.date` config variable sets a default
value for log command's --date option.
+
`--date=relative` shows dates relative to the current time,
e.g. "2 hours ago".
+
`--date=local` shows timestamps in user's local timezone.
+
`--date=iso` (or `--date=iso8601`) shows timestamps in ISO 8601 format.
+
`--date=rfc` (or `--date=rfc2822`) shows timestamps in RFC 2822
format, often found in E-mail messages.
+
`--date=short` shows only date but not time, in `YYYY-MM-DD` format.
+
`--date=raw` shows the date in the internal raw git format `%s %z` format.
+
`--date=default` shows timestamps in the original timezone
(either committer's or author's).
--parents::
Print also the parents of the commit (in the form "commit parent...").
Also enables parent rewriting, see 'History Simplification' below.
--children::
Print also the children of the commit (in the form "commit child...").
Also enables parent rewriting, see 'History Simplification' below.
--left-right::
Mark which side of a symmetric diff a commit is reachable from.
Commits from the left side are prefixed with `<` and those from
the right with `>`. If combined with `--boundary`, those
commits are prefixed with `-`.
+
For example, if you have this topology:
+

y---b---b branch B
/ \ /
/ .
/ / \
o---x---a---a branch A

+
you would get an output like this:
+

$ git rev-list --left-right --boundary --pretty=oneline A...B

>bbbbbbb... 3rd on b
>bbbbbbb... 2nd on b
<aaaaaaa... 3rd on a
<aaaaaaa... 2nd on a
-yyyyyyy... 1st on b
-xxxxxxx... 1st on a

--graph::
Draw a text-based graphical representation of the commit history
on the left hand side of the output. This may cause extra lines
to be printed in between commits, in order for the graph history
to be drawn properly.
+
This enables parent rewriting, see 'History Simplification' below.
+
This implies the '--topo-order' option by default, but the
'--date-order' option may also be specified.
Diff Formatting
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Below are listed options that control the formatting of diff output.
Some of them are specific to linkgit:git-rev-list[1], however other diff
options may be given. See linkgit:git-diff-files[1] for more options.
-c::
With this option, diff output for a merge commit
shows the differences from each of the parents to the merge result
simultaneously instead of showing pairwise diff between a parent
and the result one at a time. Furthermore, it lists only files
which were modified from all parents.
--cc::
This flag implies the '-c' option and further compresses the
patch output by omitting uninteresting hunks whose contents in
the parents have only two variants and the merge result picks
one of them without modification.
-m::
This flag makes the merge commits show the full diff like
regular commits; for each merge parent, a separate log entry
and diff is generated. An exception is that only diff against
the first parent is shown when '--first-parent' option is given;
in that case, the output represents the changes the merge
brought _into_ the then-current branch.
-r::
Show recursive diffs.
-t::
Show the tree objects in the diff output. This implies '-r'.
-s::
Suppress diff output.
PRETTY FORMATS

If the commit is a merge, and if the pretty-format
is not oneline, email or raw, an additional line is
inserted before the Author: line. This line begins with
"Merge: " and the sha1s of ancestral commits are printed,
separated by spaces. Note that the listed commits may not
necessarily be the list of the direct parent commits if you
have limited your view of history: for example, if you are
only interested in changes related to a certain directory or
file.

There are several built-in formats, and you can define
additional formats by setting a pretty.<name>
config option to either another format name, or a
format: string, as described below (see
git-config(1)). Here are the details of the
built-in formats:

The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as
stored in the commit object. Notably, the SHA1s are
displayed in full, regardless of whether --abbrev or
--no-abbrev are used, and parents information show the
true parent commits, without taking grafts nor history
simplification into account.

format:<string>

The format:<string> format allows you to specify which information
you want to show. It works a little bit like printf format,
with the notable exception that you get a newline with %n
instead of \n.

E.g, format:"The author of %h was %an, %ar%nThe title was >>%s<<%n"
would show something like this:

The author of fe6e0ee was Junio C Hamano, 23 hours ago
The title was >>t4119: test autocomputing -p<n> for traditional diff input.<<

%C(...): color specification, as described in color.branch.* config option

%m: left, right or boundary mark

%n: newline

%%: a raw %

%x00: print a byte from a hex code

%w([<w>[,<i1>[,<i2>]]]): switch line wrapping, like the -w option of
git-shortlog(1).

Note

Some placeholders may depend on other options given to the
revision traversal engine. For example, the %g* reflog options will
insert an empty string unless we are traversing reflog entries (e.g., by
git log -g). The %d placeholder will use the "short" decoration
format if --decorate was not already provided on the command line.

If you add a + (plus sign) after % of a placeholder, a line-feed
is inserted immediately before the expansion if and only if the
placeholder expands to a non-empty string.

If you add a - (minus sign) after % of a placeholder, line-feeds that
immediately precede the expansion are deleted if and only if the
placeholder expands to an empty string.

If you add a (space) after % of a placeholder, a space
is inserted immediately before the expansion if and only if the
placeholder expands to a non-empty string.

tformat:

The tformat: format works exactly like format:, except that it
provides "terminator" semantics instead of "separator" semantics. In
other words, each commit has the message terminator character (usually a
newline) appended, rather than a separator placed between entries.
This means that the final entry of a single-line format will be properly
terminated with a new line, just as the "oneline" format does.
For example:

Generate a diffstat. By default, as much space as necessary
will be used for the filename part, and the rest for the graph
part. Maximum width defaults to terminal width, or 80 columns
if not connected to a terminal, and can be overridden by
<width>. The width of the filename part can be limited by
giving another width <name-width> after a comma. The width
of the graph part can be limited by using
--stat-graph-width=<width> (affects all commands generating
a stat graph) or by setting diff.statGraphWidth=<width>
(does not affect git format-patch).
By giving a third parameter <count>, you can limit the
output to the first <count> lines, followed by ... if
there are more.

These parameters can also be set individually with --stat-width=<width>,
--stat-name-width=<name-width> and --stat-count=<count>.

--numstat

Similar to --stat, but shows number of added and
deleted lines in decimal notation and pathname without
abbreviation, to make it more machine friendly. For
binary files, outputs two - instead of saying
0 0.

--shortstat

Output only the last line of the --stat format containing total
number of modified files, as well as number of added and deleted
lines.

--dirstat[=<param1,param2,...>]

Output the distribution of relative amount of changes for each
sub-directory. The behavior of --dirstat can be customized by
passing it a comma separated list of parameters.
The defaults are controlled by the diff.dirstat configuration
variable (see git-config(1)).
The following parameters are available:

changes

Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that have been
removed from the source, or added to the destination. This ignores
the amount of pure code movements within a file. In other words,
rearranging lines in a file is not counted as much as other changes.
This is the default behavior when no parameter is given.

lines

Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular line-based diff
analysis, and summing the removed/added line counts. (For binary
files, count 64-byte chunks instead, since binary files have no
natural concept of lines). This is a more expensive --dirstat
behavior than the changes behavior, but it does count rearranged
lines within a file as much as other changes. The resulting output
is consistent with what you get from the other --*stat options.

files

Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of files changed.
Each changed file counts equally in the dirstat analysis. This is
the computationally cheapest --dirstat behavior, since it does
not have to look at the file contents at all.

cumulative

Count changes in a child directory for the parent directory as well.
Note that when using cumulative, the sum of the percentages
reported may exceed 100%. The default (non-cumulative) behavior can
be specified with the noncumulative parameter.

<limit>

An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by default).
Directories contributing less than this percentage of the changes
are not shown in the output.

Example: The following will count changed files, while ignoring
directories with less than 10% of the total amount of changed files,
and accumulating child directory counts in the parent directories:
--dirstat=files,10,cumulative.

--summary

Output a condensed summary of extended header information
such as creations, renames and mode changes.

--patch-with-stat

Synonym for -p --stat.

-z

Separate the commits with NULs instead of with new newlines.

Also, when --raw or --numstat has been given, do not munge
pathnames and use NULs as output field terminators.

Without this option, each pathname output will have TAB, LF, double quotes,
and backslash characters replaced with \t, \n, \", and \\,
respectively, and the pathname will be enclosed in double quotes if
any of those replacements occurred.

--name-only

Show only names of changed files.

--name-status

Show only names and status of changed files. See the description
of the --diff-filter option on what the status letters mean.

--submodule[=<format>]

Specify how differences in submodules are shown. When --submodule
or --submodule=log is given, the log format is used. This format lists
the commits in the range like git-submodule(1)summary does.
Omitting the --submodule option or specifying --submodule=short,
uses the short format. This format just shows the names of the commits
at the beginning and end of the range.

--color[=<when>]

Show colored diff.
The value must be always (the default for <when>), never, or auto.
The default value is never.

--no-color

Turn off colored diff.
It is the same as --color=never.

--word-diff[=<mode>]

Show a word diff, using the <mode> to delimit changed words.
By default, words are delimited by whitespace; see
--word-diff-regex below. The <mode> defaults to plain, and
must be one of:

color

Highlight changed words using only colors. Implies --color.

plain

Show words as [-removed-] and {+added+}. Makes no
attempts to escape the delimiters if they appear in the input,
so the output may be ambiguous.

porcelain

Use a special line-based format intended for script
consumption. Added/removed/unchanged runs are printed in the
usual unified diff format, starting with a +/-/
character at the beginning of the line and extending to the
end of the line. Newlines in the input are represented by a
tilde ~ on a line of its own.

none

Disable word diff again.

Note that despite the name of the first mode, color is used to
highlight the changed parts in all modes if enabled.

--word-diff-regex=<regex>

Use <regex> to decide what a word is, instead of considering
runs of non-whitespace to be a word. Also implies
--word-diff unless it was already enabled.

Every non-overlapping match of the
<regex> is considered a word. Anything between these matches is
considered whitespace and ignored(!) for the purposes of finding
differences. You may want to append |[^[:space:]] to your regular
expression to make sure that it matches all non-whitespace characters.
A match that contains a newline is silently truncated(!) at the
newline.

The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration option, see
gitattributes(1) or git-config(1). Giving it explicitly
overrides any diff driver or configuration setting. Diff drivers
override configuration settings.

--color-words[=<regex>]

Equivalent to --word-diff=color plus (if a regex was
specified) --word-diff-regex=<regex>.

--no-renames

Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration
file gives the default to do so.

--check

Warn if changes introduce whitespace errors. What are
considered whitespace errors is controlled by core.whitespace
configuration. By default, trailing whitespaces (including
lines that solely consist of whitespaces) and a space character
that is immediately followed by a tab character inside the
initial indent of the line are considered whitespace errors.
Exits with non-zero status if problems are found. Not compatible
with --exit-code.

--full-index

Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full
pre- and post-image blob object names on the "index"
line when generating patch format output.

--binary

In addition to --full-index, output a binary diff that
can be applied with git-apply.

--abbrev[=<n>]

Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object
name in diff-raw format output and diff-tree header
lines, show only a partial prefix. This is
independent of the --full-index option above, which controls
the diff-patch output format. Non default number of
digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.

-B[<n>][/<m>]

--break-rewrites[=[<n>][/<m>]]

Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and
create. This serves two purposes:

It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of a file
not as a series of deletion and insertion mixed together with a very
few lines that happen to match textually as the context, but as a
single deletion of everything old followed by a single insertion of
everything new, and the number m controls this aspect of the -B
option (defaults to 60%). -B/70% specifies that less than 30% of the
original should remain in the result for git to consider it a total
rewrite (i.e. otherwise the resulting patch will be a series of
deletion and insertion mixed together with context lines).

When used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also considered as the
source of a rename (usually -M only considers a file that disappeared
as the source of a rename), and the number n controls this aspect of
the -B option (defaults to 50%). -B20% specifies that a change with
addition and deletion compared to 20% or more of the file's size are
eligible for being picked up as a possible source of a rename to
another file.

-M[<n>]

--find-renames[=<n>]

If generating diffs, detect and report renames for each commit.
For following files across renames while traversing history, see
--follow.
If n is specified, it is a threshold on the similarity
index (i.e. amount of addition/deletions compared to the
file's size). For example, -M90% means git should consider a
delete/add pair to be a rename if more than 90% of the file
hasn't changed.

-C[<n>]

--find-copies[=<n>]

Detect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder.
If n is specified, it has the same meaning as for -M<n>.

--find-copies-harder

For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies only
if the original file of the copy was modified in the same
changeset. This flag makes the command
inspect unmodified files as candidates for the source of
copy. This is a very expensive operation for large
projects, so use it with caution. Giving more than one
-C option has the same effect.

-D

--irreversible-delete

Omit the preimage for deletes, i.e. print only the header but not
the diff between the preimage and /dev/null. The resulting patch
is not meant to be applied with patch nor git apply; this is
solely for people who want to just concentrate on reviewing the
text after the change. In addition, the output obviously lack
enough information to apply such a patch in reverse, even manually,
hence the name of the option.

When used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the deletion part
of a delete/create pair.

-l<num>

The -M and -C options require O(n^2) processing time where n
is the number of potential rename/copy targets. This
option prevents rename/copy detection from running if
the number of rename/copy targets exceeds the specified
number.

--diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]]

Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C),
Deleted (D), Modified (M), Renamed (R), have their
type (i.e. regular file, symlink, submodule, ...) changed (T),
are Unmerged (U), are
Unknown (X), or have had their pairing Broken (B).
Any combination of the filter characters (including none) can be used.
When * (All-or-none) is added to the combination, all
paths are selected if there is any file that matches
other criteria in the comparison; if there is no file
that matches other criteria, nothing is selected.

-S<string>

Look for differences that introduce or remove an instance of
<string>. Note that this is different than the string simply
appearing in diff output; see the pickaxe entry in
gitdiffcore(7) for more details.

-G<regex>

Look for differences whose added or removed line matches
the given <regex>.

--pickaxe-all

When -S or -G finds a change, show all the changes in that
changeset, not just the files that contain the change
in <string>.

--pickaxe-regex

Make the <string> not a plain string but an extended POSIX
regex to match.

-O<orderfile>

Output the patch in the order specified in the
<orderfile>, which has one shell glob pattern per line.

-R

Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or
on-disk file to tree contents.

--relative[=<path>]

When run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be
told to exclude changes outside the directory and show
pathnames relative to it with this option. When you are
not in a subdirectory (e.g. in a bare repository), you
can name which subdirectory to make the output relative
to by giving a <path> as an argument.

-a

--text

Treat all files as text.

--ignore-space-at-eol

Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.

-b

--ignore-space-change

Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace
at line end, and considers all other sequences of one or
more whitespace characters to be equivalent.

-w

--ignore-all-space

Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores
differences even if one line has whitespace where the other
line has none.

--inter-hunk-context=<lines>

Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number
of lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each other.

-W

--function-context

Show whole surrounding functions of changes.

--ext-diff

Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an
external diff driver with gitattributes(5), you need
to use this option with git-log(1) and friends.

--no-ext-diff

Disallow external diff drivers.

--textconv

--no-textconv

Allow (or disallow) external text conversion filters to be run
when comparing binary files. See gitattributes(5) for
details. Because textconv filters are typically a one-way
conversion, the resulting diff is suitable for human
consumption, but cannot be applied. For this reason, textconv
filters are enabled by default only for git-diff(1) and
git-log(1), but not for git-format-patch(1) or
diff plumbing commands.

--ignore-submodules[=<when>]

Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation. <when> can be
either "none", "untracked", "dirty" or "all", which is the default
Using "none" will consider the submodule modified when it either contains
untracked or modified files or its HEAD differs from the commit recorded
in the superproject and can be used to override any settings of the
ignore option in git-config(1) or gitmodules(5). When
"untracked" is used submodules are not considered dirty when they only
contain untracked content (but they are still scanned for modified
content). Using "dirty" ignores all changes to the work tree of submodules,
only changes to the commits stored in the superproject are shown (this was
the behavior until 1.7.0). Using "all" hides all changes to submodules.

--src-prefix=<prefix>

Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".

--dst-prefix=<prefix>

Show the given destination prefix instead of "b/".

--no-prefix

Do not show any source or destination prefix.

For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
gitdiffcore(7).

Generating patches with -p

When "git-diff-index", "git-diff-tree", or "git-diff-files" are run
with a -p option, "git diff" without the --raw option, or
"git log" with the "-p" option, they
do not produce the output described above; instead they produce a
patch file. You can customize the creation of such patches via the
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF and the GIT_DIFF_OPTS environment variables.

What the -p option produces is slightly different from the traditional
diff format:

It is preceded with a "git diff" header that looks like this:

diff --git a/file1 b/file2

The a/ and b/ filenames are the same unless rename/copy is
involved. Especially, even for a creation or a deletion,
/dev/null is not used in place of the a/ or b/ filenames.

When rename/copy is involved, file1 and file2 show the
name of the source file of the rename/copy and the name of
the file that rename/copy produces, respectively.

File modes are printed as 6-digit octal numbers including the file type
and file permission bits.

Path names in extended headers do not include the a/ and b/ prefixes.

The similarity index is the percentage of unchanged lines, and
the dissimilarity index is the percentage of changed lines. It
is a rounded down integer, followed by a percent sign. The
similarity index value of 100% is thus reserved for two equal
files, while 100% dissimilarity means that no line from the old
file made it into the new one.

The index line includes the SHA-1 checksum before and after the change.
The <mode> is included if the file mode does not change; otherwise,
separate lines indicate the old and the new mode.

TAB, LF, double quote and backslash characters in pathnames
are represented as \t, \n, \" and \\, respectively.
If there is need for such substitution then the whole
pathname is put in double quotes.

All the file1 files in the output refer to files before the
commit, and all the file2 files refer to files after the commit.
It is incorrect to apply each change to each file sequentially. For
example, this patch will swap a and b:

diff --git a/a b/b
rename from a
rename to b
diff --git a/b b/a
rename from b
rename to a

combined diff format

Any diff-generating command can take the -c or --cc option to
produce a combined diff when showing a merge. This is the default
format when showing merges with git-diff(1) or
git-show(1). Note also that you can give the `-m' option to any
of these commands to force generation of diffs with individual parents
of a merge.

The mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode> line appears only if at least one of
the <mode> is different from the rest. Extended headers with
information about detected contents movement (renames and
copying detection) are designed to work with diff of two
<tree-ish> and are not used by combined diff format.

It is followed by two-line from-file/to-file header

--- a/file
+++ b/file

Similar to two-line header for traditional unified diff
format, /dev/null is used to signal created or deleted
files.

Chunk header format is modified to prevent people from
accidentally feeding it to patch -p1. Combined diff format
was created for review of merge commit changes, and was not
meant for apply. The change is similar to the change in the
extended index header:

@@@ <from-file-range> <from-file-range> <to-file-range> @@@

There are (number of parents + 1) @ characters in the chunk
header for combined diff format.

Unlike the traditional unified diff format, which shows two
files A and B with a single column that has - (minus --
appears in A but removed in B), + (plus -- missing in A but
added to B), or " " (space -- unchanged) prefix, this format
compares two or more files file1, file2,... with one file X, and
shows how X differs from each of fileN. One column for each of
fileN is prepended to the output line to note how X's line is
different from it.

A - character in the column N means that the line appears in
fileN but it does not appear in the result. A + character
in the column N means that the line appears in the result,
and fileN does not have that line (in other words, the line was
added, from the point of view of that parent).

In the above example output, the function signature was changed
from both files (hence two - removals from both file1 and
file2, plus ++ to mean one line that was added does not appear
in either file1 nor file2). Also eight other lines are the same
from file1 but do not appear in file2 (hence prefixed with +).

When shown by git diff-tree -c, it compares the parents of a
merge commit with the merge result (i.e. file1..fileN are the
parents). When shown by git diff-files -c, it compares the
two unresolved merge parents with the working tree file
(i.e. file1 is stage 2 aka "our version", file2 is stage 3 aka
"their version").

Examples

git log --no-merges

Show the whole commit history, but skip any merges

git log v2.6.12.. include/scsi drivers/scsi

Show all commits since version v2.6.12 that changed any file
in the include/scsi or drivers/scsi subdirectories

git log --since="2 weeks ago" -- gitk

Show the changes during the last two weeks to the file gitk.
The "--" is necessary to avoid confusion with the branch named
gitk

git log --name-status release..test

Show the commits that are in the "test" branch but not yet
in the "release" branch, along with the list of paths
each commit modifies.

git log --follow builtin-rev-list.c

Shows the commits that changed builtin-rev-list.c, including
those commits that occurred before the file was given its
present name.

git log --branches --not --remotes=origin

Shows all commits that are in any of local branches but not in
any of remote-tracking branches for origin (what you have that
origin doesn't).

git log master --not --remotes=*/master

Shows all commits that are in local master but not in any remote
repository master branches.

git log -p -m --first-parent

Shows the history including change diffs, but only from the
"main branch" perspective, skipping commits that come from merged
branches, and showing full diffs of changes introduced by the merges.
This makes sense only when following a strict policy of merging all
topic branches when staying on a single integration branch.

git log -3

Limits the number of commits to show to 3.

Discussion

At the core level, git is character encoding agnostic.

The pathnames recorded in the index and in the tree objects
are treated as uninterpreted sequences of non-NUL bytes.
What readdir(2) returns are what are recorded and compared
with the data git keeps track of, which in turn are expected
to be what lstat(2) and creat(2) accepts. There is no such
thing as pathname encoding translation.

The contents of the blob objects are uninterpreted sequences
of bytes. There is no encoding translation at the core
level.

The commit log messages are uninterpreted sequences of non-NUL
bytes.

Although we encourage that the commit log messages are encoded
in UTF-8, both the core and git Porcelain are designed not to
force UTF-8 on projects. If all participants of a particular
project find it more convenient to use legacy encodings, git
does not forbid it. However, there are a few things to keep in
mind.

git commit and git commit-tree issues
a warning if the commit log message given to it does not look
like a valid UTF-8 string, unless you explicitly say your
project uses a legacy encoding. The way to say this is to
have i18n.commitencoding in .git/config file, like this:

[i18n]
commitencoding = ISO-8859-1

Commit objects created with the above setting record the value
of i18n.commitencoding in its encoding header. This is to
help other people who look at them later. Lack of this header
implies that the commit log message is encoded in UTF-8.

git log, git show, git blame and friends look at the
encoding header of a commit object, and try to re-code the
log message into UTF-8 unless otherwise specified. You can
specify the desired output encoding with
i18n.logoutputencoding in .git/config file, like this:

[i18n]
logoutputencoding = ISO-8859-1

If you do not have this configuration variable, the value of
i18n.commitencoding is used instead.

Note that we deliberately chose not to re-code the commit log
message when a commit is made to force UTF-8 at the commit
object level, because re-coding to UTF-8 is not necessarily a
reversible operation.